Third ICSI Cycle – Journal Entries

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Wednesday 3rd June 2015

Day 3 of our second fresh cycle – our third cycle in total. I’m not enjoying injecting myself again, but it’s only a couple of weeks. Since we’re doing another fresh cycle, I don’t have to down reg this time, which means no nasty menopause symptoms and a 4 week cycle instead of the 7 weeks our frozen cycle ended up taking.

My biggest fear is that my lining will be too thin again. I need to do something different this time, so we’re trying viagra. It makes sense, I guess – it increases blood flow, after all, and is supposed to increase blood flow to the uterus and therefore thicken the lining. I had to beg our clinic to let me try it. They don’t think there’s enough evidence that it will make a difference, but I had to feel like I was doing something.

I just hope it works. My next scan is on Monday and I really hope my lining is thicker than 7mm. I’m doing everything I can, so now I just have to cross my fingers.

Sunday 21st June

Sorry I haven’t written more this cycle… Let me catch you up.

I carried on with my hormone injections until the 8th and went to my first follicular scan of the cycle. To say it didn’t go well is an understatement. My lining was only 6mm. I was devastated. My follicles were growing nicely, but all I could focus on was my lining. The nurse was happy with it, because it had the triple layer pattern they like, but I burst into tears. I’d really thought the viagra would thicken my lining more than that.

I went away feeling so awful and negative, hoping that my lining would thicken before my next appointment, but feeling like nothing would ever work.

On Wednesday 10th, I went for another scan. My follicles were still growing nicely and my lining had thickened to 7.2mm. I was so pleased! Even though it wasn’t as thick as I’d hoped it would be by this point, the fact that it was thicker than Monday and over that magic 7mm made me feel so much better. I went away feeling hopeful that my lining would be even thicker by my next appointment.

On Friday 12th, I went back to the clinic. My heart sank when the nurse told me that my lining was 6.4mm. History was repeating itself! I couldn’t believe my lining had got thinner again! She took a few more measurements and recorded an average of 7mm, but I was so disappointed. I felt like nothing would ever work to make my lining thicker, but there wasn’t anything I could do. Egg collection was set for the following Monday (the 15th).

Egg collection was tough. Our consultant said he couldn’t get to 3 of my follicles on my right ovary, so they pulled and pushed me around a bit. They got 9 eggs, which is less than last time, but still good. I felt bruised and sore for days afterwards.

Of those 9 eggs, 7 were mature and 5 fertilised. Not as good a result as our first cycle, but still good numbers. Unfortunately, the clinic doesn’t open on Saturdays and doesn’t do embryo transfers on Thursdays, so we were booked for a 2 day transfer on Wednesday 17th. I was angry that our embryo transfer was being dictated by the clinic’s schedule instead of the quality of our embryos. I felt like everything was working against us and that this cycle was going to fail like the others.

But when we got to the clinic on Wednesday, we had good news from the embryologist. Two of the embryos were perfect 4-cell embryos, top grade. We also and a 3-cell and a 5-cell – one of my eggs didn’t start dividing after fertilisation – but the two 4 cell embryos were obviously the best quality. We had already decided to have two embryos transferred to give ourselves the best chance (again), so I was really pleased that two of them were obviously better than the others. It made me feel better about having a 2 day transfer – the main reason to wait is to make sure they choose the best to put back. I finally felt like something was going right!

During the transfer, the nurse said my lining looked really good and measured 8.7mm. I don’t know how accurate that was, because I’d already started taking progesterone, which changes the lining, and they normally measure it vaginally, rather than abdominally. But it gave me hope that my lining continued to thicken after my last scan and I left the clinic feeling more hopeful.

The embryologist said they’d continue to culture the other 2 embryos until Saturday to see if they made it to the blastocyst stage and whether they’d be good enough to freeze. I got The Call yesterday and both embryos had developed into beautiful blastocysts. So we now have 7 frozen blastocysts again!

I feel so lucky! I didn’t expect them both to make it, because one was developing a little too slow and the other was a little too fast. The fact that both embryos made it gives me hope that the two we transferred also carried on developing, since they were better quality on Wednesday. There’s no reason to think they wouldn’t have become blastocysts too!

I’ve been bloated and sore all week, but I feel a bit better today. Tired, but less sore. Today, my little embryos will have hatched and will be starting to snuggle into my lining. I’m feeling positive and I’m determined to stay that way! I’m off work until the 29th and test day is 1st July. I’m going to spend the next week resting and looking after myself and our embryos. I keep thinking about how this time next year, we might have twins!! Twins are scary, but I can’t bring myself to think about one of our embryos not surviving. To have them both stay with us would be a true blessing.